Why Didn't The NES Version Of Donkey Kong Have All Four Levels?

[LoganRuckman1]

This actually kind of bothers me. The NES has handled far bigger and far more technically impressive games than Donkey Kong, as well as games with far superior visuals. Super Mario Bros. 3 is an absolute powerhouse and is gigantic compared to Donkey Kong. Also, what about the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet cartridge? Are you telling me that they can fit THREE WHOLE FREAKING GAMES onto one cartridge, but a single screen platformer with four levels is too much to handle? In addition, D2K Arcade, for the FREAKING INTELLIVISION (granted, the graphics were downgraded) had nine levels and three playable characters.

This frustrates me so much. There was absolutely no excuse for Donkey Kong not to have all four levels in the NES port.

[Oltobaz1]

Donkey Kong is one of the earliest releases.

[bronZfonZ1]

One of the earliest releases, indeed.  The cartridge itself had severe space limitations due to the price of ROM chips at the time (1983, compared to 1985 for SMB and 1988 for SMB3); plus, I wager to say that the developers of the port were relatively inexperienced at NES optimization considering that it was essentially a launch title for the Famicom.

Here's a link to a similar discussion, which includes some techno-babble you may or may not understand:
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11507

[Greisha1]

[QUOTE=LoganRuckman]This actually kind of bothers me. The NES has handled far bigger and far more technically impressive games than Donkey Kong, as well as games with far superior visuals. Super Mario Bros. 3 is an absolute powerhouse and is gigantic compared to Donkey Kong. Also, what about the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet cartridge? Are you telling me that they can fit THREE WHOLE FREAKING GAMES onto one cartridge, but a single screen platformer with four levels is too much to handle? In addition, D2K Arcade, for the FREAKING INTELLIVISION (granted, the graphics were downgraded) had nine levels and three playable characters.

This frustrates me so much. There was absolutely no excuse for Donkey Kong not to have all four levels in the NES port.[/QUOTE]

There's a homebrew cart on the NES that includes all 4 stages. I'm guessing the ROM chip in the original cart was too small.

[strat1]

Most early NES carts (the black box games) were 16 kilobytes in size, and it might have taken a 32K rom (the size of Super Mario Bros.) just to add that one screen with lots of unused space left over.  That pie level was probably cut because it's kind of a no-brainer compared to the other three levels.

[FinalLapTwinkie1]

I have wondered also. Donkey Kong Junior and Popeye seemed complete games. It would have made sense to release an update later when Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Mania were coming out. Why Nintendo Why?